Crooks, beware: Telegram will now hand over your data to authorities if asked
Pavel Durov seems to have had enough trouble with the law. The Telegram CEO, who was detained in France in late August, has said that his platform will now provide authorities with some user data if they request it legally.
Image by Cybernews.
Pavel Durov seems to have had enough trouble with the law. The Telegram CEO, who was detained in France in late August, has said that his platform will now provide authorities with some user data if they request it legally.
In a Telegram post, Durov said authorities would have to provide search warrants or other valid legal requests if they expect to receive users’ IP addresses and phone numbers. According to Durov, the move “should discourage criminals.”
“While 99.999% of Telegram users have nothing to do with crime, the 0.001% involved in illicit activities create a bad image for the entire platform, putting the interests of our almost billion users at risk,” he wrote.
The French authorities said they had to move carefully after Durov’s arrest because of the platform's lack of moderation and rife criminal activity. Durov was accused of not cooperating with law enforcement regarding crimes such as child sexual abuse, drug trafficking, and fraud.
A couple of weeks ago, Durov – already released on bail but forced to stay on French soil – spoke out about the incident for the first time since his arrest. He seemed defiant, criticizing the French authorities and calling them “misguided.”
Nevertheless, Telegram has already quietly updated its FAQ section. It now says that all Telegram and group chats have report buttons allowing users to flag illegal content to the platform’s moderators.
This alone has caused disquiet among many, and one can only imagine the exodus now after Durov’s announcement that information on potentially criminal users would be handed over to law enforcement.
Telegram’s new policy of cooperation with law enforcement states: “If Telegram receives a valid order from the relevant judicial authorities that confirms you’re a suspect in a case involving criminal activities that violate the Telegram Terms of Service, we will perform a legal analysis of the request and may disclose your IP address and phone number to the relevant authorities.”
John Scott-Railton, senior researcher at the University of Toronto's Citizen Lab, said on X that dissidents in Russia, Belarus, or the Middle East who have been gravitating towards Telegram should now also be worried.
“Many are now scrutinizing Telegram's announcement with a basic question in mind: does this mean the platform will start cooperating with authorities in repressive regimes?” said Scott-Railton.
Some observations on #Telegram's new policy of law enforcement cooperation:
undefined John Scott-Railton (@jsrailton) September 23, 2024
There was a long period when dissidents & others fearing dictators from Russia & Belarus to the Middle East gravitated towards Telegram because of the (misleading) marketing about encryption and the… pic.twitter.com/6CjuzzqEzD
After all, Telegram has not yet clarified how the firm will handle the demands from authoritarian regimes and how the “legal analysis” will look. In many of these countries, simple dissent is criminalized.
Many users also mistakenly believe that Telegram offers end-to-end encryption by default – it doesn’t. Users have to turn on the feature manually, and most don’t.